The Bothers of Breakfast
by ArwenFairTinuviel
Summary: The answer to why Professor Severus Snape is in such a bad mood every morning! Severus recollects his painful memories of breakfast in his youth and feels great displeasure at living to see another morning. This one shot is a response to the one-word challenge 'breakfast' in the FFN Writers Unite Facebook group.


**A/N: **_This one-shot is inspired by the word 'breakfast' as part of a challenge in the Facebook group for Fanfiction authors, FFN Writers Unite. I don't usually write one-shots but the idea came to me during a long car journey through France so I decided to respond to the challenge! I hope you like it!_

**The Bothers of Breakfast**

It was morning. Again.

The blissful reprieve that a few hours' sleep had brought him was at a sudden end. It was time to face the world.

Severus cursed loudly.

Life had been so horrendous for so long now that this had become a daily habit.

Severus hated waking up. He hated the watery grey light of daybreak and the bloody cheerful birdsong that accompanied it. And he hated breakfast most of all.

It had always been this way.

He supposed that when he was little and things had been better at home between his parents, he had been content to wake up and go downstairs, where a bowl of cereal or a plate of buttered toast would await him, accompanied by a kiss on his forehead.

But all pleasure in eating the first meal of the day had quickly vanished around the time he started showing signs of magic. That was when the rowing began. When he awoke to the sound of angry shouts and clatters in the kitchen below his room, when he was bellowed at for accidentally making his spoon fly towards him across the kitchen table, when he was grasped by the collar and thrown on the floor for daring to parade signs of his _abnormality_ in his father's face. And it was one day, when he was stirring on the floor among the shards of broken china and soggy cornflakes, his neck feeling painfully tight, that he realised breakfast was not such a good thing anymore.

He began to rise early in the hope of wolfing down some breakfast before his father awoke. But his mother began to neglect the house, and their food stores ran down, and when he asked what there was to eat she either scolded him for being impertinent or collapsed into a fit of tears from which he could never rouse her. And so Severus took to grabbing whatever he could find from the kitchen cupboards – a brown banana, last night's leftovers, or a long forgotten packet of crackers – and bolted out of the house before his father could greet him with one of his morning tirades and a fist in the stomach, rather than a nice bowl of warm porridge.

Then breakfast became a rather sorry business, nibbling on the broken remains of stale crackers under the fluttering branches of the great willow tree that stood next to the river, while he shivered in the chill morning air and dreamed longingly of a hot cup of tea to keep him warm.

When he met Lily, breakfast became different. But not better. She seemed to realise that he was hungry, even though he was careful never to reveal that he hadn't eaten much or why. Perhaps she had guessed, whether from his thin, bony frame, or the way he insisted that she never visit his house, or the unsuppressed joy that had lit up his eyes the first time she had brought a croissant down to their little spot by the river, wrapped up in a napkin. Most days when she was allowed to meet up with him, she would bring something – an apple, a jam sandwich, a squashed muffin – and Severus soon saw through her excuses for bringing them and realised that she had taken pity on him.

He would cringe and look away, repulsed by himself for being so pathetic, so desperate, willing himself to pretend that he had just come from a happy home just like Lily's and that he was well loved and well fed. But then he would look upon the food she had brought, a feast in his starved eyes, and bewitched by the sweet smells and groaning hunger in his stomach he would give in. He devoured her kind food parcels as if they were a forbidden pleasure, both enjoying and hating the breakfasts they shared in the grove by the river, ever punished by feelings of guilt and self-loathing.

His first breakfast at Hogwarts had been a kind of wondrous dream. All he could have possibly desired to eat or drink – and even more beyond his wildest imagination – was laid there on the table before him. He eagerly consumed everything he could lay his hands on, entranced by the feast, until his eyes fell on Lily, far away on the other side of the hall.

And then his heart sank, and a hint of nausea began to twist in his bloated intestines. For, in spite of their strong, steadfast friendship, they had been separated, by houses and values and prejudices. And sitting there each morning became a cruel reminder of how life was intent on tearing them apart.

When he returned each summer for the long holiday, Severus found his mornings at home even more miserable in contrast to the wealth of food and excitement that he had become accustomed to at school. His father's resentment and fury at his son's magical ability was piqued by the sight of Severus' face and his ebony wand, and he soon realised that Severus was evading him by rising early each morning. From then on mornings became a kind of foray, with Severus ducking under his father's arm and leaping down the stairs to the sound of slurred swearing and vicious threats, dodging out of reach and pelting down the road, retreating to his refuge in the park in order to have a day of peace.

Breakfast was abolished. It was eat and regret, or run.

Over the seven years at Hogwarts breakfast became a more strained affair. His Slytherin companions frowned upon his friendship with Lily, who was a Muggleborn, and he no longer tried to catch her eye across the room for fear of provoking an attack on her. When at last their friendship broke beyond repair, breakfast was horrendous. Severus could barely eat for the knowledge that she was in the same room as him, that she would never speak to him again, that their days by the river were over. He struggled to keep his eyes off her and he strove to persuade himself that the sorrow etched onto her beautiful face was not his fault. He fought to ignore his greatest mistake when it was staring him sadly in the face.

Once Severus had left Hogwarts and signed up with the Death Eaters full-time, breakfast became rather unpredictable. Night-time raids and incapacitating injuries were mostly to blame for that. And the knowledge that he was fighting face to face with Lily drove him over the edge – he turned to the Firewhisky to drown his regrets, and in the morning the pounding headache and churning stomach made sure that breakfast was most definitely not going to happen.

During the months after Lily's death, waking up to morning was pure torture. He wished he was dead. He starved himself, willing the pain from hunger and the relentless guilt to kill him so he could join her. But he was bound to serve Dumbledore and he was forced to live, compelled to suffer the consequences of his mistakes, however painful they were.

Now, Professor Snape sat at the teachers' table, looking down at the four long tables divided by House, a constant, incessant, painful reminder of those times long gone when Lily had sat just there, alive, willing to keep hold of his friendship, only for him to throw it away. And Harry Potter was there among those sickeningly happy faces, a taunting sign that Lily had loved another man – his _enemy_ – more than him. Potter sat there, laughing idiotically with his silly friends, eating as if it was a joy to live, as if there was a reason why he ate to stay alive.

Severus shoved his plate away roughly, the bacon and eggs in his mouth tasting just like stale crackers.

He hated breakfast, and nothing would change that.

He hated the meal that celebrated the start of a new day, another score of hours spent battling against insolent students, serving Dumbledore without question, paranoid that any minute the Dark Lord would summon him and he would find himself forced to smile as he looked down at horrors beyond the imagination or writhing with agony under the Cruciatus Curse.

He hated waking up and finding that he had to face life, with all its cruelties and injustice.

And so he felt no remorse in snapping at the other teachers beside him, in glowering at the students before him, or inflicting Potter with a detention for looking too happy. Life had drained all pleasure from his first meal of the day, and it was time that everyone else learnt just how unbearably painful breakfast could be too.

**xXxXx**

**Thank you for reading! Please leave a review and let me know what you think :)**


End file.
